5/24/2012 09:52:00 am -
Reported by
Chuck Foster

Photo: Gareth Bundy
"We were really lucky to catch her. As we arrived, literally, she was leaving."

Jenna-Louise Coleman began her tenure as the new co-star of Doctor Who this week, with the actress spotted yesterday at the end of filming her first scenes on location at Plas Llanmihangel Manor House, South Glamorgan.

The read-through for her first episode to be recorded took place on Monday, with the BBC's official Doctor Who Twitter feed stating: "History has been made! A new era begins! Jenna-Louise Coleman has just completed her first Doctor Who read-through. One word. Brilliant!"

Details of her character are being kept under wraps, at least for present. Speaking to Digital Spy, Steven Moffat said when we could expect to learn more:

Christmas! But don't expect to learn everything! We've got a good story and there are some proper legitimate surprises in it. I'm excited by it. I think we're going to do some fun stuff.

We can't really contain everything, because people will crawl all over us with cameras and sneak views of scripts and call-sheets. Something will get out. But we've been fairly sly, so let's wait and see.

Moffat also explained the later launch of the new series this year:

I don't know, on this occasion, that the thinking particularly came from me, actually. I've always been open to anything that shakes [the series] up. I think that decision actually came from the BBC. But I've been well up for anything that we can do to shake up the transmission pattern, the way we deliver it to the audience and how long we make the audience wait, simply because that makes Doctor Who an event piece.

The more Doctor Who becomes a perennial, the faster it starts to die. You've got to shake it up, you've got to keep people on edge and wondering when it will come back. Sherlock is the prime example, as far as that goes. Sherlock almost exists on starving its audience. By the time it came back this year, Sherlock was like a rock star re-entering the building!

So keeping Doctor Who as an event, and never making people feel, 'Oh, it's lovely, reliable old Doctor Who - it'll be on about this time, at that time of year'. Once you start to do that, just slowly, it becomes like any much-loved ornament in your house - ultimately invisible. And I don't want that to ever be the case.